0.00.03 I am Jonathan Edwards, and I’m a board director at Clarion Communications. And I look after the not-for-profit division, which is looking after clients from the public sector, from charities, from like sort of trade organizations. So I am doing what could be seen really, as the nice side of public relations.
00.00.58 Even though both my parents were professionals, middle-class professionals, my mother is a therapist, my father an engineer. My first week of school was terrifying, that I had to do technical drawing and metalwork and woodwork, and I was so impractical at things like that, and I just thought, how am I going to get a career? It threw me into my passion, which has always been history and politics really, which is what I excelled at school.
00.01.08 My father went to university, and my mother went to university in later life, she was an opera singer beforehand, before she then went to university and trained as a therapist. I followed my passion, which was history and politics and did a history and politics degree, and it was really at university that I sort of decided what my career was going to be. I fell into it really, by getting involved in student union politics. I started work at sort of a, behind the student union bar.
00.01.32 But sort of after a year, coming up to my final year, and I just thought I could be president of this union, I can actually make a difference here. So I ran as student union president. I had to go out there and campaign, that was my almost entry into communications and public relations, really. I then decided I had spent too long at my university, so I had to actually make that break.
00.01.58 My passion was in public relations, so I actually joined WPP then, at sort of an...to an agency called Cohn and Wolfe which had a big education client, which was promoting like sort of a new image for boarding schools. And my first client was 13 headmasters and a nun, which was quite a difficult job to actually take on. So I spent five years at Cohn and Wolfe and I actually moved up the ranks, and one of my main talents is publicity and broadcasting, and I became that sort of director of marketing and publicity at Cohn and Wolfe.
00.02.40 It gave me the real passion for actually getting out and speaking to people. Interior design is what I do outside work. I get great pleasure from tiling floors and painting walls and digging over gardens and planning like sort of landscape projects.
00.03.00 Because it’s a different form of creativity, and it is also physical work as well which is important to me, because when you spend most of your time actually sat at your desk, or you’re out with clients, it is important to keep physically active. Just to actually see something develop from a patch of soil or an empty shell in a house, to actually see something physical, I think it’s important.
00.03.00 In my local area which is Stroud Green in North London, I set up the neighbourhood watch, I sat on our local police committee for the last eight years, so I am always giving something back. And I think one day I would love to get into politics, not to be a minister, not to be prime minister, but to be a good constituency MP. And that's still a passion; that is still a dream.
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards
0.00.03 I am Jonathan Edwards, and I’m a board director at Clarion Communications. And I look after the not-for-profit division, which is looking after clients from the public sector, from charities, from like sort of trade organizations. So I am doing what could be seen really, as the nice side of public relations.
00.00.58 Even though both my parents were professionals, middle-class professionals, my mother is a therapist, my father an engineer. My first week of school was terrifying, that I had to do technical drawing and metalwork and woodwork, and I was so impractical at things like that, and I just thought, how am I going to get a career? It threw me into my passion, which has always been history and politics really, which is what I excelled at school.
00.01.08 My father went to university, and my mother went to university in later life, she was an opera singer beforehand, before she then went to university and trained as a therapist. I followed my passion, which was history and politics and did a history and politics degree, and it was really at university that I sort of decided what my career was going to be. I fell into it really, by getting involved in student union politics. I started work at sort of a, behind the student union bar.
00.01.32 But sort of after a year, coming up to my final year, and I just thought I could be president of this union, I can actually make a difference here. So I ran as student union president. I had to go out there and campaign, that was my almost entry into communications and public relations, really. I then decided I had spent too long at my university, so I had to actually make that break.
00.01.58 My passion was in public relations, so I actually joined WPP then, at sort of an...to an agency called Cohn and Wolfe which had a big education client, which was promoting like sort of a new image for boarding schools. And my first client was 13 headmasters and a nun, which was quite a difficult job to actually take on. So I spent five years at Cohn and Wolfe and I actually moved up the ranks, and one of my main talents is publicity and broadcasting, and I became that sort of director of marketing and publicity at Cohn and Wolfe.
00.02.40 It gave me the real passion for actually getting out and speaking to people. Interior design is what I do outside work. I get great pleasure from tiling floors and painting walls and digging over gardens and planning like sort of landscape projects.
00.03.00 Because it’s a different form of creativity, and it is also physical work as well which is important to me, because when you spend most of your time actually sat at your desk, or you’re out with clients, it is important to keep physically active. Just to actually see something develop from a patch of soil or an empty shell in a house, to actually see something physical, I think it’s important.
00.03.00 In my local area which is Stroud Green in North London, I set up the neighbourhood watch, I sat on our local police committee for the last eight years, so I am always giving something back. And I think one day I would love to get into politics, not to be a minister, not to be prime minister, but to be a good constituency MP. And that's still a passion; that is still a dream.
Whilst studying History and Politics at university Jonathan Edwards became Student Union President and soon found his passion for public relations. Now, as a Board Director for award winning London based PR agency Clarion Communications, Jonathan describes his job as "what could be seen really, as the nice side of public relations".
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